Hi Andrew On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 12:59 PM, Andrew Chapman <[email protected]> wrote: > Sorry - this is a long post! > This discussion so far has focused primarily on the QGIS developers' > viewpoint, but I think it may be worth considering the situation from the > perspective of those with the money. There seem to be (at least) four major > groups that could help, each with their own agendas/motivators. > 1) National and governmental. These organisations potentially have access to > very large amounts of money with decisions being driven (probably) by a mix > of political agenda and perceived national benefit. I think money from this > group (if gained) would be in relatively large amounts (in the UK, projects > would be unlikely to be less than £10k and could lead to much larger > amounts), with quite broad targets and little or no day to day overseeing. > To get such money I think we need to have increased use of GIS seen as > important to national success and QGIS perceived as the best solution to > support. Not only do we want to encourage use of QGIS directly but also we > need to publicise it wherever possible and try to get it added to government > software lists. > 2) Medium to large organisations. These organisations typically will have a > specific and (hopefully) well-defined requirement and would see the > developers as external consultants. The solution could possibly be at two > levels with QGIS consultants helping deliver overall solutions that have > additional work sub-contracted within the developer group. > Typically, before any formal quote is requested, someone would be asked for > an order of magnitude estimate of likely cost and timescales. I've spent > decades on both sides of this fence working as a consultant and managing a > variety of sub-contract projects - if someone cannot quickly answer the > basic questions at this stage (availability of competent people, range of > daily rates, complexity and risk/uncertainty, very rough estimate of likely > effort required) then the project dies at birth. > The next stage would be a formal specification and quotation phase, neither > of which should be overly complex. If there is a lot of uncertainty, I've > usually run a small pre-project to remove the uncertainty and reduce > development risks. > 3) Small organisations and individual users. These people generally have > little money... but there are lots of them. The main voluntary payments that > they make are to charities so, while not going as far as suggesting that > QGIS become a registered charity, could we try to convince people to make > small regular payments? 1,000 people giving £50 each on average per year > would pay for a useful amount of bug fixing etc. > 4) Current and potential developers. Developers put a lot of their time and > often personal money into QGIS. The easier it is for new developers to > contribute, the more everyone benefits. Can we make it easier for potential > new developers to get started? Could we have an OSGeo4 type of installer to > create a working development environment for plugins and/or trunk? > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > Group (1) needs marketing effort. Pete Wells, Saber Razmjooei (both Faunalia > UK) and I have been doing this in the UK with Ordnance Survey, national and > local government for about three months and progress is looking promising. > Group (2) is also part of our marketing, but there is a clear problem in > that even the first "order of magnitude cost" question would be difficult to > answer... although in reality I would come up with a number based on what I > know of QGIS and lots of years making educated guesses. > Group (3) we could have gentle encouragement to make payments... but it must > be easy! My experience making a donation for hackfest was that it was hard > work and has resulted in a rash of Italian spam. We would need foolproof way > to make local currency payments including by cheque. > And finally, don't forget the documentation. User manuals and tutorials are > as much part of "selling" QGIS to users as its functionality. > Andrew Chapman >
I wrote some thoughts on funding here: http://linfiniti.com/2011/06/some-thoughts-on-the-future-of-qgis/ It would be really nice to find some benefactor to sponsor the project as a whole for the unglamarous stuff as mentioned in the above article) too. Regards Tim > _______________________________________________ > Qgis-developer mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer > -- Tim Sutton - QGIS Project Steering Committee Member (Release Manager) ============================================== Please do not email me off-list with technical support questions. Using the lists will gain more exposure for your issues and the knowledge surrounding your issue will be shared with all. Visit http://linfiniti.com to find out about: * QGIS programming and support services * Mapserver and PostGIS based hosting plans * FOSS Consulting Services Skype: timlinux Irc: timlinux on #qgis at freenode.net ============================================== _______________________________________________ Qgis-developer mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
